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00:05In a world of dangerous work, modern machines and technological advancements can mean the
00:13difference between life and death on the job. From deep woods timber titans to mills of molten
00:21metal and rugged road warriors, mighty machines are doing their part to keep humans safe while
00:29getting the job done. Welcome to the forest. With a deadly work of cutting, stripping, and transforming towering trees into
00:47timber is done by a team of powerful machines.
00:57Timber isn't just raw material, it's the backbone of hundreds of other industries around the world.
01:04When I see a tree, I'm sizing it up to see what best I can get out of that tree.
01:10These backwood goliaths are tackling one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet.
01:23Getting a tree from the forest and into the mill is no easy task.
01:28In any terrain, anything can happen. You've always got to be on your toes, you've always got to walk where
01:33you're going.
01:34Machines like the feller buncher, forwarder, and harvester make the job look simple.
01:41I do some of the work, but the machine does most of the work to do it.
01:45But this job is anything but simple.
01:49This block we're in today, it's about a thousand acres.
01:52Working in this environment, harvesting trees, getting the bushes ready for logging operations, makes it very, very challenging.
02:00The trees aren't just sitting in front of you, so we're looking for a good quality, generally pine tree, spruce,
02:06jack pine, red pine.
02:08While the work of bringing down timber is highly mechanized now, it all started with axe-wielding lumberjacks.
02:20Timber!
02:21Who put their lives on the line each day to make it happen.
02:26Logging has always been a death trap.
02:28You're dealing with huge, unpredictable trees and rough terrain.
02:32Growing nasty weather and heavy machinery, and it's no wonder it's still one of the deadliest jobs out there.
02:39Forestry has been part of civilization from the earliest times.
02:43And so has the risk that comes with harvesting the timber that builds our world.
02:49Initially humans took just what they needed, but as the European colonies expanded, so did the demand for lumber.
02:55Back then, it was all about getting as much wood out as fast as possible.
03:02Occupational health and safety was almost non-existent.
03:05Workers relied on their instincts, and what more experienced loggers taught them.
03:10After World War II, machines took over.
03:15Chainsaws replaced hand saws.
03:17And harvesters did the work of entire crews.
03:20The main hazards in the original days was you got a man out in the bush, a chainsaw.
03:25Cutting trees, limbing trees, had felling hazards, overhead hazards.
03:31Increased productivity brought increased risks.
03:34Now it wasn't just trees that crushed people, but heavy machines too.
03:40The chainsaw led to a dramatic increase in amputations and deaths.
03:44These horrific accidents provided the evidence necessary to create vital safety standards we strive for today.
03:53But machines dramatically improved safety.
03:57Today, these woodland warriors are evolving, becoming smarter and stronger.
04:17This mega machine, the Feller Buncher, is 28 tons of timber terminating power, stretching five meters long and three and
04:27a half meters tall.
04:28It's like a bulldozer crossed with a tank.
04:31This is the Feller Buncher.
04:37It's the machine that cuts the tree, picks it up, grabs it, carries it around, puts it down wherever you
04:43want.
04:46Imagine ten pulled bunions rolled into one steel giant.
04:51This beast can bunch five trees in one go, depending on their size.
04:59With a machine like this, you could easily do five to eight hundred trees in one day.
05:04Put them down nicely, easy. Right there. Perfect.
05:08That's the equivalent of 12 men with chainsaws and axes working an entire week. It's a game changer.
05:20It gathers trees in its massive metal fist, like grasping blades of grass.
05:26This is what they call the big fingers. So these fingers have all the power.
05:29Once you cut a smaller tree, you close with both sets of fingers.
05:34The small fingers will stay closed and you can open these ones up.
05:38And what happens is the small fingers will hold the tree in place and you can cut more than one
05:41tree at a time.
05:42These ones will open up and grab the next tree.
05:44The fingers open wide, the saw spins into action, and the head closes in on the target.
05:51Within a few seconds, it's on to the next conquest to repeat the process.
05:56The fingers are connected to the boom, which does all the lifting work.
06:00It picks it up, swings side to side, and you can put it down wherever you want.
06:06Down you go!
06:11The mammoth 9-meter boom arm is longer than a city bus and can lift nearly 6 tons.
06:18That's as much as a fully loaded truck trip.
06:21Add a 360-degree swing, and this steel giant can grab trees from any angle while locked in a single
06:29position.
06:35This is what they call a hot saw.
06:39Once you turn it on, it's going continuous at a very high rate of speed.
06:45It doesn't stop until you turn it off.
06:49In the past, a lumberjack was only as good as his axe.
06:54A modern logger is just as reliant on their saw blade.
07:00This over-meter-and-a-half wide circular cutter spins at almost 1,200 rotations per minute.
07:07The equivalent of over 300 kilometers per hour.
07:12Meaning the blade can slice through just about any tree trunk like a flash of lightning.
07:20Let's see how long it takes to stomp that blade.
07:22The blade's turned off.
07:28Not so much momentum that blade has, even when it's turned off.
07:31But all that work can bust up the blade and lead to catastrophe.
07:43The saw is the most dangerous part because there's obstacles in the woods.
07:46Like there's stones and stuff.
07:48Sometimes you will hit a stone.
07:49These are just carbide teeth.
07:51If you do hit a stone, sometimes the teeth will break and they'll fly.
07:54They can fly up to 500 feet.
07:57If you don't know where they're going to go, you can't see them going that fast.
08:00But even on the boom it says stay back 500 feet and that's the reason why.
08:05This forest crusher plows through the trees with a 284 horsepower engine.
08:11About the same as a modern day muscle car.
08:16But out here, the machine takes a bigger beating than a racer does on the track.
08:23Every morning I have to do a circle check.
08:26One thing I do is I check the oil.
08:27Oil dipstick is right here.
08:28You take it, you pull it out.
08:30You take a look at the level.
08:31Level's good.
08:32Then over here is the air breather.
08:34Where it takes the engine needs fresh air to operate.
08:38Sucks a lot of dirt in there.
08:39The machine's got to work really hard to get that air sucked through that filter.
08:42If the filter gets plugged, then the exhaust will turn blue.
08:45You'll lose a lot of power.
08:46You'll know.
08:51Once the trees come down, they're sliced, diced, and ready for the mill.
08:55By a 28-ton tree slayer known as the Harvester.
09:02Its role is to strip every branch from the trunk and cut timber to the exact size needed.
09:09I don't know what's better, the strip it or the rip it.
09:14This machine's so powerful.
09:15It can pick up an entire tree and at least pick it up and move it where I want it.
09:19It can probably pick up a few hundred pounds.
09:21It feels like I can move pretty much the world with it.
09:24It's anything I can fit that head around, I can probably move it.
09:27The Harvester has turned timber extraction into an oversized game of pick up sticks.
09:34Its colossal eight-meter boom arm grabs trees with savage power as the massive mechanical sawhead rips and chops them
09:42to size in seconds.
09:47Wheels pull the tree through the head's enormous two-meter grasp, like threading a giant needle with a telephone pole.
09:56Traveling at five meters per second, each of the four D-limbing blades trim the branches from the trunk.
10:05It grips the wood as it gathers the perfect measurements for the mill.
10:11Finally, the 75-centimeter cutter slices the trunk into custom lengths.
10:18But this is mostly ideal for big, narrowly timber.
10:22The biggest tree I've ever cut with this is probably around a 28-inch tree.
10:29The operator sets the knife pressure based on the size and what kind of trees you're cutting.
10:34Then Smart Tech kicks in and automatically adjusts the pressure to strip off branches.
10:38This keeps the tree's natural protection intact so you don't waste valuable wood.
10:44I like this machine because it takes all the guesswork out of everything.
10:50It does it all for you. It's a pretty smart machine, pretty sophisticated.
10:54Back when machines were purely mechanical, operators had to do everything by hand.
11:00After a few hours, your arms were dead from wrestling the controls.
11:04And if a tired operator missed the lever or made a wrong cut, it could be deadly.
11:12Now, onboard smart systems like GPS, safety kill switches, 360-degree cameras, and autonomous navigation
11:20keep operators out of the most dangerous areas and take over tasks
11:24so there's way less chance for deadly human error.
11:29But all the tech in the woods still can't outsmart gravity.
11:34We've got to watch out for a dead tree that can break off at any time and come back and
11:39hit me.
11:40So with these bigger trees like this red pine, you have to be careful.
11:43And I've had quite a few come and hit the cow.
11:52Falling trees are a constant hazard when working in the woods.
11:58You need to deal with them immediately and get them off the site.
12:02They're structurally sawdust, a very dangerous tree.
12:08These dead trees have to be cut because they could fall at any time.
12:14You've got to worry about them falling on the cab and possibly damaging the cab
12:17and possibly killing you more or less, too.
12:21Cabs like this have reduced fatalities and near-fatal injuries.
12:26They're armored cocoons made of steel, and the windows are made from lexan,
12:31which is essentially bulletproof.
12:34As stable as the machine looks, they can be rolled over onto their sides
12:38if you're not careful in the rougher terrain.
12:40Once the machine goes over, it can shake you up pretty bad.
12:44The cab is very safe.
12:46It's designed to roll over, and it's also designed to take a hit from a fairly big tree.
12:54It's basically a steel shell that keeps you alive when the forest is trying to kill you.
13:00Every day is a great day when you're in the bush alone.
13:04It's just enjoying nature.
13:07However, all the harvesters' hard work means nothing if the timber just sits there.
13:16They've got to get it to the mill.
13:18Enter the forwarder.
13:21Forwarder may not look as tough as its timber teammates,
13:23but it has a major role, collecting the fell trees and cleaning up their mess.
13:29Shouldering up to 13 and a half tons of timber at a time,
13:33this muscle-bound loader swoops in with its eight-wheel drive transmission
13:38and clears timber to safe ground before it's too late.
13:45The corridor isn't just hauling. It's on a rescue mission.
13:48Every log lying in the woods is losing value every minute that it sits.
13:53Weather and bugs can quickly turn that premium wood into waste.
13:59Forestry machines feed a $992 billion global market.
14:05To put that into perspective, all the wood generated around the world
14:09could be enough to produce over 100 million homes each year.
14:13And it doesn't stop there.
14:18Timber isn't just for houses.
14:20It's for your packaging, telephone poles, coffee cups and toilet paper.
14:25If timber stops coming down, everything crashes.
14:29Nearly 33 million jobs depend on it worldwide.
14:34And once it arrives at the mill, that timber becomes currency.
14:40We are exporting our product all over the world.
14:44Every one of these logs that you see here in the yard
14:46will become a piece of lumber or a square.
14:49We have some of the best quality in the world.
14:53From untamed wilderness to global marketplace,
14:56that's the power of an industry built on timber.
15:00The future of the forest industry looks bright.
15:03We need that for housing. We need that for everyday supplies.
15:06And the best thing is, it is renewable.
15:09It will always be there for us as long as we tend to it,
15:12we look after it.
15:13So, you know, the cycle just continues.
15:16These mechanical guardians of the woods are conquering the forces of nature,
15:20fulfilling their duty in the face of danger.
15:23They persevere, harvesting tomorrow's world
15:26while keeping today's workers alive, one massive tree at a time.
15:38In Iowa, a team of mechanical titans are waging war with fire and fury.
15:47These are no ordinary machines.
15:50They are industrial dragons spewing rivers of molten metal and red-hot steel,
15:56harnessing temperatures hotter than the Earth's core.
15:59This is one of America's most challenging industrial environments.
16:04Where scrap metal is reborn as mighty steel.
16:10And at the center of the superheated steel mill stands the ultimate melting machine.
16:18An electric arc furnace.
16:21A mechanical inferno continuously fueled by scrap metal.
16:30The electric arc furnace is used to melt scrap steel into liquid steel as our iron base to make new
16:38steel plate for our customers.
16:42Sometimes it's a little nerve-racking, you know.
16:46Yeah, my arm on a B73.
16:49Alright, guys.
16:50175 tons of steel scrap that goes in will get melted down in around 45 minutes and tapped out into
16:58a ladle.
17:00To turn scrap into steel, you need a steady supply of shredded metal to charge the furnace.
17:09So right now you can see these cars right in front of us have what's called shredded scrap.
17:14This plant devours everything from old cars and trucks to appliances and bed frames.
17:22You can take a rail car full of scrap out here, throw it into our furnace and start the melting
17:27process.
17:28With eight hours, we'll have another rail car on the other end of the plant with a brand new steel
17:32plate product leaving our facility.
17:34The advantage of this process is we are taking recycled steel scrap, making it new, and then we can do
17:41it again over and over almost indefinitely.
17:45Before electric arc furnaces, blast furnaces were the leaders of the pack.
17:51They're larger, dirtier predecessor that have been used for nearly 2,000 years.
17:58Blast furnaces don't use scrap steel.
18:00They rely on extracted raw materials like iron ore and are powered by fossil fuels like coke, a byproduct of
18:07coal.
18:09And once a blast furnace is running, it can stay burning for up to 10 years.
18:13Though electric arc furnaces have been around since the early 1900s, they weren't popular because they were expensive to set
18:20up and needed lots of electricity.
18:22But today, mills like this one are pushing towards perfecting a CO2-free steel making process.
18:30Where there's a readily available stream of scrap, we can utilize the electric arc furnace and recycle that steel scrap
18:38and melt it into new fresh steel for a new end application.
18:43The electric arc furnace devours 160 tons of scrap metal, like melting down 875 refrigerators every hour.
18:56What makes the scrap steel process so effective and sustainable is that there's no gas and no coal.
19:03What the arc furnace does have is a massive electrode, a glowing hunk of graphite wired with electricity.
19:11It's really bright, and I'm looking at the electrode.
19:14Graphite electrodes are crucial for their high-turmal and electrical properties.
19:18That allows them to withstand the intense heat without warping or melting too fast themselves.
19:24We're just starting to bore in on our scrap.
19:27To melt down just one ton of scrap steel, the electrode consumes roughly 360 kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to
19:36power a house for 12 days.
19:41Right now it's arcing.
19:44The light flashing is the arc.
19:49Once inside the furnace, it's like an electrical storm.
19:53High-voltage power blasts through the electrode, forming an electric arc, a lightning-like plasma burst.
20:00The arc becomes the electrical bridge, letting the current leap from the electrode down through the scrap pile,
20:07literally jumping through thin air.
20:10The raw energy from the arc turns that steel into liquid with 1600 degrees Celsius of unstoppable heat.
20:19This is a 24-hour, 365-day operation.
20:24Over time, the electrodes will wear and melt down with the constant heat of the furnace.
20:28So crews have to be very careful moving these components around as breakage can be costly.
20:35Hey, clean them and don't drop that. Give us a minute, alright?
20:39Every day, these skilled steelworkers are operating and navigating super-heated machines.
20:46They can't afford to let their guard down, especially when they're tapping into this fiery furnace.
20:56Putting on my PPE. We're getting ready to go out and tap steel out of a furnace.
21:04It's a layer of heat protection so that we don't get burned.
21:08The electric arc furnace has two taps.
21:10One on the side, to remove slag or molten waste material that flows to the top of the liquid by
21:15steel.
21:16And the other, on the bottom, is used to transfer the final mixture of steel to the next machine of
21:21the process.
21:27Say leave it up, Tim.
21:31All righty.
21:33Once it gets up to close to 3,000 degrees, we go out and take temps, check chemistry.
21:39During the tapping process, operators have the chance to get up close and personal with the furnace.
21:48Those heat-resistant suits are all that separate them from the molten steel.
21:53One splash and...
21:59When it comes to steel production, safety is paramount.
22:05We're gonna get ready to swing the roof off the top of the furnace so that we can inspect the
22:08furnace for water.
22:10Make sure there's no refractory damage and all the internals look good.
22:14The refractory material are the heat-resistant ceramic lining that insulate the furnace from the extreme temperature.
22:21It's like the inner part of a termos that keeps your coffee hot.
22:25If that protective lining breaks down, the mechanical parts get worn or water gets into the furnace, that damage could
22:31be catastrophic.
22:33Around the globe, at other steel facilities, accidents have happened.
22:38Water and steel can be an explosive combination.
22:43If water gets into a hot arc furnace, it would rapidly vaporize into steam, creating a violent expansion of gas
22:51and a shockwave that could send molten metal and machine parts flying.
23:00All right, we got our safety light, so we're safe to go up on the furnace.
23:06We're looking over the edge of the furnace.
23:08We really can't get any closer to the mesh.
23:11Melt the gloves, melt the helmet, melt the face shield.
23:14The reason we want to make sure that there's no water inside this furnace, it creates a reaction and it
23:20will blow things all over the place.
23:22This is a very dangerous aspect.
23:25Probably one of the more dangerous jobs that we do while we're here to make it.
23:32It's a risky job, but someone's got to do it to make sure this steel melting machine continues to pour.
23:40As everything looks good, this furnace construction is complete and we can exit the sump on the top of the
23:45furnace.
23:47Now comes the hazardous job of hauling molten metal from the arc furnace across the mill floor to the next
23:55machine in the system.
23:57I operate the hot metal crane, which moves liquid steel around in a ladle they call them.
24:04Now I'm just going to set this whole ladle up on the caster and then they will open it up
24:10from underneath and let the steel flow down.
24:14Maneuvering this blazing hot liquid steel requires nerves of steel.
24:22The pedals on my feet, the one on the left is a brake, which stops me from moving north and
24:29south.
24:30The bridge brake we call it, and the pedal on the right is a siren.
24:37Every precaution must be taken to keep the mill and the crew safe.
24:43The siren gets people's attention. Always looking out for people.
24:49The hulking hot metal crane delivers the ladle full of molten metal to the top of the colossal continuous casting
24:55machine.
25:03This multi-floor machine is so huge, it needs a control room with multiple sets of eyes to oversee all
25:09its moving parts.
25:13Steel flows from the ladle into the top of the structure, where it will travel through basins, molds, and rollers
25:21that will quickly transform molten metal into a single strip of solid steel.
25:30The operator over here is pushing what they call mold, puts it on the nozzle, they just open the slide
25:36gate up, and he's just letting the operator know the steel is passing through the shroud, so it's open.
25:41The crew opens the tap at the bottom of the ladle to release 1,600 degrees Celsius liquid steel into
25:49a holding tent, also known as a tundish.
25:52Right here we have the tundish and a submerged entry nozzle.
25:58As the molten metal leaves the tundish, it flows into a water-cooled copper mold.
26:03When the molten metal meets the 40 degrees Celsius walls of the mold, it forms a solid outer skin, like
26:10the hardening of a rock shell of a lava flow.
26:14Steel rollers drag the solidifying metal down, while water jets hammer the outside, cooling it further.
26:21Nearly 23,000 liters of water per minute cool the metal, while inside this mammoth machine.
26:32We've got the strand coming out of the casting machine, it's approximately 1,400 degrees.
26:36These solid steel slabs weigh 41 tons, and are up to 15 centimeters thick.
26:45The slabs are an unfinished product, you can't build a car with them, you can't use them for construction.
26:52So, the mystery becomes, what can you do with them?
27:01Inside the rolling mill, mighty metal magicians turn these giant slabs into workable steel.
27:11First up, the reheat furnace.
27:13By the time the slabs leave the casting machine, they've cooled and solidified.
27:18The reheat furnace's job is to get them hot enough again, so they become pliable.
27:23That way, they can be stretched and reshaped.
27:27Think of the reheat furnace as a massive industrial toaster oven, where steel slabs bake for two hours.
27:35Reheating them to a softened, red hot, 1,300 degrees Celsius.
27:42Hey Joe, you got a slab coming out?
27:46So, at this point now, we just want to make sure that it does sit down nicely on the discharge
27:50table, it's not skewed, it's not hung up on anything.
27:53And once everything's at a home position, the slab will take off.
27:58It's just a lot of things have to go right for the process to work.
28:01No news is good news.
28:03Usually, the more steel we put through the furnace, the better day we're having.
28:08A side effect of the reheat furnace is the formation of visible scale, impurities that form on the surface of
28:15the furnace.
28:17So, we had a slab just now discharge the furnace. It's going to come to what we call a D
28:22scale.
28:24If the scale is not removed, it can really lower the quality of the steel and it will decrease the
28:29metal integrity. Nobody wants that.
28:31D scale is now blowing 2,500 PSI, water pressure, and it will blow off the scale that forms inside
28:39the furnace.
28:42Next up, the hot softened steel is rolled out and compressed with four gargantuan rollers that squeeze the metal with
28:50bone crushing force.
28:54It will square up the slab and it will take its first pass. First reduction on the mill is about
29:00an inch of reduction on the mill.
29:03Several passes through the mill will make our final product.
29:07With 25,000 horsepower, the power of up to 12 diesel locomotives, this metal flattening beast squeezes the steel until
29:16it's longer and wider than a semi-truck trailer.
29:22This mill is very important to the process. If it's down, we're not making any money, obviously. We're not making
29:27any product.
29:28The steckel mill passes the freshly pressed steel to the next machine.
29:36An industrial Edward Scissorhands, where a series of mechanical shears cut the steel to size.
29:43The piece right now currently just come out of the static shear. He's going to measure that to the correct
29:48length,
29:48where he'll make the cut.
29:50The work of transforming scrap into new steel never ends.
29:56These heat-resistant, battle-tested monster machines of the mill push out plate after plate and keep going to supply
30:04the world with steel.
30:07Oh, I like seeing the finished product go out the door.
30:11It feels great doing what we do. We take all these old used products, turn them into brand new steel.
30:16Everybody out there, they're seeing, they're using steel every single day, and we're all a part of that.
30:20These industrial titans have revolutionized steel production, transforming one of the world's most demanding jobs into infinitely safer work as
30:31they forge the backbone of civilization.
30:42From ripping out the old, to mixing the new, laying it down, and smoothing it up.
30:51Paving new roads is a dirty and dangerous non-stop process.
30:56Done by some of the mightiest machines on the planet.
31:00This is the night shift.
31:03Mission?
31:03Kansas City Metropolitan Area Highway I-35.
31:12To conquer an interstate highway with fresh pavement, you need a coordinated collection of heavy-duty machines.
31:23A project like this requires continuous paving, a method where asphalt is laid without interruption, using specialized machines to maintain
31:30a steady flow of pavement.
31:32And it's all going to happen before the morning commute begins.
31:34The goal of this is that our paving process never stops.
31:38If you stop paving, it can cause a bump in the highway.
31:41It takes a lot of moving parts and a heavily coordinated effort.
31:45If someone isn't paying attention or something breaks down and not only shut down the operation, it can be fatal.
31:53Out here, in the middle of the night, danger is heavy.
32:03The asphalt industry as a whole is an extremely dangerous profession.
32:08You know, the asphalt is coming out of the trucks, 300 degrees.
32:11A lot of heavy machinery.
32:12We have pinch points everywhere where people can get ran over by a machine, injured.
32:18Worst case scenario, you know, something we never want to experience is a fatality.
32:23But when your job is in the middle of a speeding highway, things can go sideways fast.
32:39Highway work is one of those jobs that always comes with a certain degree of risk.
32:43Because there's so many uncontrollable factors like traffic and weather.
32:46Cruise on high alert at all times.
32:48We're working right in the middle of the highway.
32:51We got traffic coming southbound at 65 miles an hour on the highway.
32:55On the northbound side, we've condensed four lanes of highway down to one.
32:58So the traffic is a lot slower, a lot safer for our people on the ground.
33:04Even with numerous safety strategies in place, the dangers are still there.
33:12It's dangerous work, so you got to keep your head on a swivel.
33:15You got to watch everything and watch out for your brothers.
33:18I've seen people get hit. I've seen machines get hit.
33:22We've had people throw bottles at us out as they've drove by.
33:25Street races right by us going over 100 miles an hour.
33:28We've had people come flying up in our work zones, and it's adventure every night.
33:32Overnight paving crews risk everything to keep America moving.
33:37And these machines have the crews back when it counts.
33:42Long before paving can begin, a machine with an appetite for destruction
33:47gets this pavement party started.
33:51Enter the cold planer.
34:05A cold planer peels away the damaged layers of old pavement down to the healthy layers underneath,
34:12leaving behind a perfectly prepped canvas for fresh pavement.
34:17Weighing in at 34 tons, this beast is ravenous for the road.
34:25Its 2-meter cutting drum spins at 118 revolutions per minute with diamond-shaped teeth,
34:32ripping through pavement like a gluttonous predator.
34:38You can tell the machine vibrates and shakes a lot.
34:42That's the constant beating of the teeth tearing up the material below us.
34:48This is very hard concrete with granite in it.
34:51It takes a lot of work to pull up.
34:54These are carbide-tipped teeth, a carbon mixed with metal that creates a way tougher compound than teeth.
35:01They can be spaced differently depending on what they're ripping off.
35:05So each tooth doesn't take all the punishment.
35:09The middle has a drum with about 200-plus teeth, spinning, rotating, chipping away at the concrete surface.
35:17That drum is then loading it up into a conveyor chamber, going out into the dump truck.
35:24With all those teeth tearing up the road, this gladiator needs to constantly rinse its mouth out to keep crushing.
35:31There are multiple sprayers. There are sprayers over our drum, sprayers in our dust suppression system,
35:38all along our conveyor belt, everything to keep dust to minimal.
35:44Water runs dry, the teeth start breaking, shattering, nothing good. Don't run without water.
35:51They must keep the teeth sharp, or the planer becomes a toothless tiger.
35:57Dull bits mean extra passes, killing productivity as time, and cars, fly by.
36:04Every night when you're done, you should check your teeth.
36:07Now I'm looking for any of them that are broke.
36:10Sometimes you get away with not changing teeth, but sometimes you can change them every hour.
36:17There's a broken thing that's all shaved down and broke.
36:20That's how it looks brand new.
36:27A massive 636 horsepower engine with a 1,105 liter fuel tank brings serious muscle and endurance for ripping up
36:38pavement all night long.
36:39No other machine could do the job quite like this.
36:44Right now as we put pressure on so it'll match my previous cut, we want to make it smooth so
36:50that when we put the asphalt down it's smooth dry.
36:53The cold planer leaves the literal groundwork for every part of the paving process that follows.
36:59The planer isn't the only thing tearing up our walls.
37:05Mother Nature's brutal impact on pavement is relentless, no matter the time or season.
37:12When snow and rain rains on asphalt, it will cause the moisture inside the asphalt to freeze under cold conditions.
37:20It will expand, debond the material, and then when it falls out, it will cause the particles to fall apart.
37:28After the planer rips out the old surface, the material transfer vehicle, commonly referred to as the shuttle buggy, emerges
37:36from the darkness to get the new pavement prepped.
37:40The paving starts up there with them trucks delivering the asphalt into the shuttle buggy.
37:45We got the asphalt truck up here, he's burying 20 tons of asphalt.
37:49We got three more asphalt trucks in front of him.
37:52The goal is to get this truck in, he dumps in the hopper here.
37:56Asphalt place is dumped into the 17 meter long gatekeeper of the paving battalion.
38:04A hundred percent, people say I'm a winchpin of the operation being up here on the shuttle buggy.
38:12Inside this small but mighty shuttle buggy, unrefined materials, mostly stone, sand, and gravel, become road-worthy.
38:22The shuttle buggy takes the mix out of the dump truck, puts it in the belly of the machine,
38:27and then it remixes the aggregate and the foil so everything's combined perfect before it goes into the paver.
38:37Pavement, as hot as 150 degrees Celsius, falls into the tank or hopper.
38:44With an auger, a corkscrew-like blade, it works like a behemoth blender, violently shaking the mixture down through the
38:52system.
38:54The spinning action evens out the temperature and texture of the mix,
38:58before spitting it out into a conveyor belt headed for the paver.
39:02Well, while I'm up here with the conveyors on, it feels like I'm always in a mild earthquake.
39:11The key to laying really good pavement is to keep the paving process moving in perfect sync.
39:17No stopping, no gaps, just one smooth operation.
39:24Before asphalt, American roads were dirt, gravel, and cobblestone.
39:28They got you where you needed to go, but these roads were rough and poorly designed,
39:32leading to the death of up to 40,000 people every year.
39:37Engineers had to come up with a material that could be durable, hard enough to hold up to the heavy
39:42traffic that was to come.
39:44America's desire for freedom of the open world demanded infrastructure that could support multiple vehicles,
39:50carrying multiple people, going multiple directions, and asphalt was the answer.
39:56We do hope to step up the grid road program throughout tonight's space.
40:00We can turn rivers in their courses, level mountains to the plains.
40:05By the 1950s, President Eisenhower's grand plan called for a nationwide interstate highway system of 64,000 kilometers of highway.
40:15Over 10 years, he conquered the nation with pavement.
40:20Today, America is crisscrossed by nearly 80,000 kilometers of interstate highways,
40:26connected to another 6.5 million kilometers of roads.
40:34On modern roads, crews are constantly maintaining the empire that keeps our world moving.
40:40The real hero of this process is the paver.
40:45We're ready to go, ready to start paving.
40:49Slow and steady wins this race against time and traffic.
40:55This 20-ton road warrior lays more than 7 kilometers of pavement every hour.
41:02How they feed that mix through the trucks and through that material transfer vehicle in front of the paver,
41:07and back underneath that screed is absolutely critical to get that smooth ride.
41:12The screed is a heated metal plate that hangs off the back of the paver.
41:16Hot asphalt flows down the hopper to the screed, which smooths it out exactly to the right thickness as the
41:23paper moves forward.
41:27Now too low.
41:28The operator continuously adjusts the screed to change the depth of the pavement.
41:38Its massive half-meter treads spread its weight like snowshoes on fresh powder.
41:44They won't crush the hot asphalt underneath while keeping this metal barbarian steady for flawless pavement.
41:54This is like the cream of the crop right here. In order for you to have a great smooth road,
41:59this is what you need.
42:01But, some things still need the human touch.
42:05Even with all the machines that we have out here, it still takes a person with a tool in their
42:10hand to make a road a road.
42:16These are two rollers that are considered breakdown rollers.
42:20They're trying to make it smooth and I'm trying to make it compacted.
42:24And they're doing it with a machine that's aptly named the compactor.
42:30So right now they're making their pass back and they're vibrating the asphalt to get the density that we need.
42:40It can be pretty stressful knowing that I'm the last guy that touches it.
42:44Just because, you know, if there's any imperfections in it, that's the guy that everyone looks to.
42:50You've got your breakdown who breaks it down and you've got your finished guy who makes it look pretty.
42:57This is what it takes out here.
42:58It's heavy machines, asphalt at 300 degrees, dump trucks.
43:03It takes the men and women on the ground to provide a road.
43:07An hour to lay, 20 years to stay.
43:12All right, great job guys.
43:15As dawn breaks over the I-35, these steel gladiators return to the shop.
43:21What was once a battle-scarred, crumbling highway is now a flawless foundation for decades to come.
43:28To be continued...
43:32To be continued...
43:33To be continued...
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